Fairy Tales for Young Readers

by E. Nesbit

  “Oh, if you come from a marquis,” said the cook, “that’s quite a different pair of shoes. Raoul, show the gentleman up.”

  So one of the footmen who had been loudest in jeering at Michau had to lead him to the King’s presence.

  “A gift, your Majesty,” said the cat, bowing low before the throne, “from your faithful servant my Lord the Marquis of Carabas.”

  “Why, I never heard of him,” said the King. “But then it’s true that I have not long moved into my present palace.”

  “Oh,” said the cat carelessly, “my Lord Marquis owns a good deal of land not so very far away.”

  “Indeed,” said the King.

  “Thank your master, my fine cat, and be sure you don’t leave the palace without a good meal.”

  Next day the cat caught a brace of partridges, and took them to the palace; next day it was pheasants. He always had a good meal before leaving, and the folks in the kitchen got to look for his coming, for Michau was the best of company, and could tell more stories, and more amusing ones, than any cat I ever heard of.

  But Yvo said, “This is all very well for you—you are getting as fat as butter with all these free meals at the palace; but I get nothing but my brothers’ leavings, and even those I shan’t get much longer. They are growing tired of waiting for you to make my fortune.”

  “Don’t you be so tiresome,” said the cat. “All the time I’m eating I’m picking up bits of news from the servants, and presently I shall hear something that I can use to advance your fortunes. But if you worry I won’t do anything at all—so there.”

  “Very well,” said Yvo, “then I won’t worry.”

  And the very next day, as the cat sat in the King’s kitchen, happy in the good company of a venison pasty and a wooden bowl of cider, he heard news that made him swallow down the cider at one gulp, leave the best of the pasty, and run all the way home.

  “Come along, master,” the cat cried to Yvo, who was half asleep in the mill-house, “the King and the Princess Dulcibella are driving out in their coach today, and they are to go along by the river-side. So come quickly.”

  “It won’t do me much good to see kings and princesses,” said Yvo; but he followed the cat all the same.

  And when they got to the river, that runs smooth and shallow between two rows of pollarded grey willows, the cat said:

  “Now undress, and go into the water up to your neck. You’re a pretty fellow enough; it’s your clothes that spoil you, especially since you cut up your best blue shirt to make my game-bag.”

  The water was cold, and Yvo could not swim, but he did as Michau told him, and the cat put his clothes in the mouth of an otter’s den, and kicked a turf in after them to hide them completely.

  And in the water Yvo stayed, getting colder and colder and more and more uncomfortable, till the King’s carriage came by. Then the cat stood up in his boots with the yellow heels, and put his paws to his mouth and shouted:

  “Help, help! for my Lord Marquis of Carabas.”

  The King’s carriage stopped, and the King put his head out to see what was the matter.

  “My master was bathing,” said the cat, “and some robbers came and carried off his clothes and his horse; and his castle is miles away, and he is in despair because he cannot come out of the water to greet your Majesty.”

  “Oh, is that all?” said the King; and he told his under-chamberlain to send a running footman back to the palace for a silver-laced suit, with hat, ruff, boots, and rapier, all complete. Then the carriage waited while Yvo came out of the water and dressed; and when he had on the fine suit he looked as fine a gentleman as anybody there. So he presented himself to the King, and the King presented him to the Princess, and he and she each thought they had never seen any one they liked so well.

  “Let me give you a lift,” said the King heartily, “and thank you for all the fine game you’ve been sending me lately. We’re only going for a drive. I can drop you anywhere you like.”

  So Yvo, who had never before ridden in anything grander than a wheelbarrow, got into the coach with the King and the Princess. And Yvo and the Princess sat face to face; and, truth to tell, they found it hard to keep their eyes off each other.

  The cat ran on ahead, till he came to a field where reapers were at work getting in a very fine harvest of corn.

  “My men,” he said, “if you do as I tell you you shall each have a pocketful of money. But if you don’t my master will hang you. If the King asks you whose field this is you must say it belongs to the Lord Marquis of Carabas.”

  So when the King, who took an interest in farming, came to the field he admired the rich grain, and stopped his carriage to ask whose it was.

  “It belongs to my Lord the Marquis of Carabas,” said the reapers all together.

  “Very fine indeed, my lord,” said the King.

  “It’s the first good crop I’ve ever had from that field,” said Yvo.

  The cat hurried on to another field, where men were at work binding corn in sheaves, and spoke to them as he had done to the others. And when the King came along, and questioned them, they said with one voice:

  “It all belongs to my Lord the Marquis of Carabas.”

  “Your estates are very large, my lord,” said the King, “and very prosperous; I never saw a finer crop.”

  “It’s almost a miracle,” said Yvo, “for I never took any trouble with that field.”

  So the carriage drove on, and still the King looked at the corn-fields—and the Princess and Yvo looked at each other. And now the road left the river, and wound like a twisted white ribbon over the green velvet of smooth meadows to where, far off, at the foot of a hill, stood a large and beautiful castle.

  “I wonder now whose that is?” said the King. “Let us go and see.”

  The cat took a very short cut across country, and got to the castle long before the King did. He had a little chat with the sentry at the keep, told him some funny tales, picked up a little gossip, and then went on to the castle itself, where he told the porter he had to deliver a message from his master the Marquis of Carabas.

  Now this castle belonged to an ogre, and so did all the land for miles round. But if you think the cat was afraid of ogres you do not do him justice.

  He went up to the great gate, pulled the great bell, and asked to see the master of the house; and his manners were so good and his language so fine that the porter led him into a great hall hung with beast-skins and furnished with old black oak. And there sat the ogre, as big as he was ugly, and as ugly as he was wicked.

  “What do you want?” he asked the cat fiercely; and his mind was quite made up that, whatever the cat wanted, what the cat should get would be the end of a rope.

  “Only to see you,” said the cat humbly; “and now I have seen you I can die contented.”

  “I’m not much to look at,” said the ogre, but he was pleased all the same.

  “Looks are not everything,” said the cat, “though even in looks you are the finest ogre in all Brittany. I have travelled all over the world, in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Island of Sark, and everywhere I have heard of nothing but your beauty, your wit, your wealth, and your accomplishments.”

  “Well,” said the ogre, scratching his head, “you’ve got a tongue. Wet it with a cup of wine, and sit down and have a turnover or a girdle-cake.”

  “I’ll sit down with pleasure,” said Michau, “but I won’t eat, thank you, because I’ve just had breakfast with the King, who owns the next-door kingdom to yours, and his lovely daughter, Princess Dulcibella.”

  “Oh,” said the ogre, “and did they talk about me too?”

  “I should think they did,” said the cat. “They told me all I have told you, and more. Why, they said you had the power of changing yourself into any animal you chose; but of course, I’m not so mouse-minded as to believe that.”

  “Oh, aren’t you,” said the ogre. “Well, then, look here.” He stood up, took off his cloak, and said:


  “I shall now change myself into a lion. No deception, ladies and gentlemen. You shall see for yourselves how it’s done!”

  He uttered a roar so loud that the other lions might almost have heard it in their distant deserts, and then and there became a lion. Michau was off through the window before the echo of the roar had died away. He landed on the sloping kitchen roof, but his boots made it very difficult to hold on to it, so he slid off, clattering on to the roof of the washhouse, and from that to the roof of the oven, and from that to the stones of the yard. And from the yard he ran in and upstairs, and peeped into the ogre’s hall. The lion was gone, and only the ogre sat there, laughing all by himself at the fright he had given his visitor.

  “Excuse my having left you for a moment,” said the cat, walking in as though nothing had happened. “I thought I heard my master, the Marquis of Carabas, calling me. But it was only the well-handle creaking.”

  “You know well enough,” said the ogre, “that you were frightened because I turned into a lion.”

  Michau smiled with polite amusement.

  “Oh, not at all, I assure you,” he said. “Why, that’s such a common trick, if you’ll pardon my saying so. Almost every one I know can do that. What the King was saying was that you could turn yourself into quite little things—a fly, or a beetle, or a mouse; and of course I’m not so bat-witted as to believe that.”

  “Oh, you aren’t, aren’t you?” said the ogre. “You just look here!” And with a squeak of triumph he turned himself into a mouse.

  “Weet, weet!” said the ogre-mouse, frisking about under Michau’s nose.

  “Miaow!” said Michau, and pinned the ogre-mouse to the leg of the ogre’s chair. There was no more ogre then; only a dead mouse, which Michau scorned to eat.

  So that when the King and the Princess and Yvo arrived at the front door of the castle the cat had already been round to all the servants, explaining to them, as he had done to the reapers, that everything really belonged to the Marquis of Carabas; and the King was met by rows of bowing retainers, and by Michau, who came to meet the coach, saying:

  “Welcome, your Majesty, to the halls of the most noble the Marquis of Carabas.”

  “So this is your country seat, is it?” said the King. “Sly dog, not to say a word when we were wondering whose this fine estate could be!”

  “Enter, your Majesty,” said Yvo, “and let us see if my major-domo can find a crust to set before you.”

  The cat hurried away, and ordered a banquet to be served as soon as possible. The King was so pleased with looking at the castle gardens and pleasaunces that dinner seemed ready in no time. And it was a dinner fit for any king. As for the new Marquis of Carabas and the Princess, they had eyes for nothing but each other.

  The King, who had eyes for everything, saw this, and when his wine cup was filled for the seventh time he raised it so that its jewels flashed in the afternoon sun, and said, winking at the cat, who stood beside Yvo’s chair:

  “I cannot help thinking that the noble Marquis is worthy by his person and his estates of my daughter’s hand, and I am sure no one who has seen them together can doubt what they think about it. Bless you, my children! To the health of Princess Dulcibella and the Marquis of Carabas!”

  The King feasted three days in the castle of the Marquis of Carabas, and then the young people were married. The two brothers were invited, but they were too shy to come, so Yvo made one of them his wood-reeve and the other his grand almoner, and everyone was quite happy, especially Michau, whose cleverness had brought all this happiness about; because making other people happy is really astonishingly pleasant, as you will find if you try it.

  Of course, Michau told a lot of stories, but then all’s fair when you’re dealing with ogres.

  JACK AND THE BEANSTALK

  JACK LIVED WITH his mother in a little cottage. It had dormer windows and green shutters whose hinges were so rusty that the shutters wouldn’t shut. Jack had taken some of them to make a raft with. He was always trying to make things that seemed like the things in books—rafts or sledges, or wooden spear-heads to play at savages with, or paper crowns with which to play at kings. He never did any work; and this was very hard on his mother, who took in washing, and had great trouble to make both ends meet. But he did not run away to sea, or set out to seek his fortune, because he knew that that would have broken his mother’s heart, and he was very fond of her. Though he wouldn’t work, he did useless pretty things for her—brought her bunches of wild-flowers, and made up songs, sad and merry, and sang them to her of an evening. But most of the time he spent in looking at the sky and the clouds and the green leaves and the running water, and thinking how beautiful the world was, and how he would love to see every single thing in it. And he always seemed to be trying to dream one particular dream, and never could quite dream it. Sometimes the thought of his mother working so hard while he did nothing would come suddenly upon him, and he would rush off and try to help her, but whatever he did turned out wrong. If he went to draw water he was sure to lose the bucket in the well; if he lifted the wash-tub it always slipped out of his fingers, and then there was the floor to clean as well as the linen to wash all over again. So that it always ended in his mother saying. “Oh, run along, for goodness’ sake, and let me get on with my work.” And then Jack would go and lie on his front and look at the ants busy among the grass stalks, and make up a pretty poem about the Dignity of Labour, or about how dear and good mothers were.

  But poetry, however pretty, is difficult to sell, and the two got poorer and poorer. And at last one day Jack’s mother came out to where he was lying on his back watching the clouds go sailing by, and told him that the worst had come.

  “No help for it,” she said; “we must sell the cow.”

  “Oh, let me take it to market,” cried Jack, jumping up. “I shall pretend to myself I’m a rich farmer with a cow to sell every market-day.”

  So the rope halter, with Jack at one end of it and the cow at the other, started off down the road.

  “Ask five gold pieces for her,” said the Mother, “and take what you can get; and don’t let the grass grow under your feet.”

  Jack went along very slowly, and kept his eyes fixed to the ground, because if the grass did grow under his feet he wanted to watch it growing. So this was how it was that he ran plump into something hard, and, looking up, saw a butcher, very smart in a new blue coat with a red carnation in his button-hole.

  “Who are you shoving of, young shaver?” the butcher asked crossly. “Why don’t you look where you’re going?”

  “Because I thought I might see you,” said Jack.

  “Ha! I see you’re a clever boy,” said the butcher, not at all offended. “Thinking of selling your cow?”

  “Well,” said Jack, “that was rather the idea.”

  “And what’s the price?”

  “Five gold pieces,” said Jack boldly.

  “I wouldn’t rob you of her by offering such a poor price,” said the butcher kindly. “Look here.”

  He pulled out a handful of large, bright-coloured beans.

  “Aren’t they beautiful?” he said.

  “Oh, they are—they are!” said Jack. And they were. They had all the colours and all the splendour of precious stones.

  “I never saw anything at all like them,” said Jack, and longed to have them in his pockets, to take them out and play with them whenever he liked.

  “Well, is it a bargain?” the butcher asked.

  “Oh, yes,” said Jack. “Take the ugly old cow.”

  And with that he took the beans, thrust the end of the rope into the butcher’s hand, and hurried off towards home.

  I don’t think I had better tell you what happened when he told his mother what he had done. You can perhaps guess. I will only say that it ended in his mother throwing the beans out of the window and sending Jack to bed without his supper. Then she spent the evening ironing, and every now and then a tear fell down and hissed and fizzled on
the hot iron.

  The next morning Jack woke up feeling very hot and half choked. He found his room rather darker than usual, and at first he decided that it was too early to get up; then as he was just snuggling the blanket closer round his neck he saw what it was that was shutting out the sunshine. The beans had grown up into a huge twisted stalk with immense leaves. When Jack ran to the window and pushed his hand out among the green he could see no top to the plant. It seemed to grow right up into the sky. Then suddenly Jack was a changed boy. Something wonderful had happened to him, and it had made him different. It sometimes happens to people that they see or hear something quite wonderful, and then they are never altogether the same again.

  Jack scrambled into his clothes, ran to the door, and shouted:

  “Mother, those beautiful beans have grown! I told you I’d made a good bargain with that silly old cow. I’m going to climb up and see what’s at the top.” And before his mother could stop him he was out of the window and up the beanstalk, climbing and wriggling among the branches, and when she reached the window he was almost out of sight. She stood looking up after him till she couldn’t see him any more, and then she sighed, and went up to her son’s untidy room, to make his bed and set all straight for him.

  Jack climbed on and on until his head felt dizzy and his legs and arms ached. He had had no supper last night, you remember, and no breakfast before he started. But at last there was no more stalk to climb, and as soon as he reached the top tendril it suddenly flattened and opened out before him into a long white dusty road. He was in a new land, and as far as he could see nothing else was alive in that land but himself. The trees were withered, the fields were bare, and every stream had run dry. Altogether it was not at all a nice place; but if it wasn’t nice it was new; and besides, he could not face the idea of going down that beanstalk again without anything to eat, and he set out to look for a house and beg a breakfast. At that moment something dark came between him and the light—fluttered above his head, and then settled on the road beside him.